FEDERAL WAY, Wash. -- Junior diver Alex Clay won the three-meter competition at the Pac-12 Championships Thursday to help the Stanford women’s swimming and diving team stay in second place through two days of the four-day meet. Three Cardinal filled the top five spots of the 50-yard freestyle in the team’s top swimming event of the evening, as California leads Stanford, 535-479.5.
“We had a great team performance today,” said head coach Greg Meehan. “One of the best days at a Pac-12 meet, top to bottom, in the last three years. Sarah Haase continues to impress and Alex Clay was a hammer in winning the three-meter dive.”
Clay posted a 363.95, well ahead of Arizona’s Samantha Pickens (352.95) and Arizona State’s Hailey Casper (343.35). It is the first Pac-12 title for the Powell, Ohio, native.
Freshman Simone Manuel was second in the 50 free (21.81), Stanford's highest individual swimming finish of the second evening session of the meet. Fellow freshman Janet Hu tied for third (22.13) and sophomore Lia Neal was .01 behind for fifth (22.14).
Haase improved on an eighth-place preliminary time in the 200-yard IM to finish fourth in the final behind three Cal Bears. The human biology major’s 1:57.01 in the final is her personal best and No. 8 time in Stanford history. Sophomore Grace Carlson (1:57.71) was in sixth with a B-cut time that is expected to qualify her for the NCAA meet.
Stanford's other second-place effort came in the 200-yard freestyle relay (1:28.02). Cal’s 1:27.18 set a Pac-12 meet record.
Junior biology major Allison Brown and senior public policy major Mackenzie Stein started the night by taking with eighth (4:48.41) and ninth (4:43.65), respectively, in the 500-yard freestyle. Brown had qualified in fourth with a morning prelim time of 4:41.30, tied for the sixth best time in program history.
Preliminaries and finals for the 400-yard individual medley, 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard freestyle, 100-yard breaststroke and 100-yard backstroke are set for Friday in addition to the prelims and semifinals for the men’s three-meter dive and the women’s one-meter dive. Action from the first two days of competition will air at 10 a.m. PT Friday on Pac-12 Networks.